A business or company that provides services and/or products to clients or customers may provide their customers with customer service in the form of a customer service center that handles customer requests. Customer requests may comprise requesting new products or services, getting support for a product or service, asking questions about a product or service, etc. In non-automated systems, when a customer calls the service center with a request, the service center manually routes the call to an agent that services the customer's request.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are systems that provide information in the form of recorded messages over telephone lines in response to customer input in the form of spoken words or touch tone signaling. Examples of IVR systems are those implemented by banks, which allow customers to check their balances from any telephone, and systems for providing automated stock quotes.
IVR may be used to both to acquire information from, or enter data into, a database. For example, banks and credit card companies use IVR systems so that their customers can receive up-to-date account information instantly and easily without having to speak directly to a person. An IVR system may also be used to gather information. For example, an IVR telephone survey might prompt the customer to answer questions by pushing the numbers on a touch-tone telephone.
When fully implemented, an IVR system does not require human interaction over the telephone. The customer's interaction with the database is predetermined by the extent to which the IVR system will allow the customer access to the data.
IVR systems have been successful because they generate significant cost savings due to the ability to route calls to the appropriate call center without having to incur the cost of a service representative to accomplish the routing. Once the call is routed, subsequent dialog with the customer could be additional IVR dialog or it could be assisted by a service representative. Thus, a given customer service task could be partly implemented with IVR and partly with human assistance.
The absence of a service representative can sometimes be frustrating to the customer, such as when an IVR system simply provides recorded answers that assume the customer has already correctly diagnosed a problem. On the other hand, although non-automated systems do provide a live service representative, customers can become frustrated if they are required to be put on hold to wait for service.